Silent Hill: Quiet Streets
by WoundedWarsong
Summary: The fog rolls in again, a gentle rustling of the branches of dead trees... The Silence threatens to suffocate... The Ritual is nearly at hand...
1. Chapter 1

Silent Hill: Quiet Streets

-:ONE:-

None of the books held any meaning anymore. Full of the thoughts and actions of people long dead, along with the rituals they spent their primitive lives toying with, they served as nothing more than slight diversions. Archer had tried all the incantations, performed all the rites and gestures, and drawn all the symbols he could find in the ancient pages of the dusty tomes. And now, as he sat in the deserted library with its high vaulted ceiling, Archer finally began to question the very activities that had given his life much needed purpose over the past months.

The town was empty when he walked out onto the lonely main street after the days research was done. He remembered when the eerie calm was unsettling to him, when he had first stumbled upon the community known as Silent Hill. Now, after having been there for 7 months, it was second nature. In fact, Archer found the silence comforting, for he knew that silence meant a lack of the Tortured. They could not move without emitting some kind of auditory signal, and his realization of that fact was what kept him alive for so long.

Walking up Koontz St. towards the apartment he "borrowed" for the duration of his stay, he heard a familiar rustle from underneath an abandoned car nearby. Even though he could not see very far due to the pea-soup thick fog, he knew what was there. It stood up, shining dully through the fog and twitching uncontrollably. Archers hand slipped into his overcoat pocket and his fingers rested on the hilt of a service revolver. Sometimes these things just shambled away, as if he wasn't there, but that was when he was lucky. And Archer was rarely lucky.

It took notice of him almost immediately and began its slow persuit. There was no fear in Archers demeanor, though; he had dealt with these things so many times they were almost a joke to him. He drew a bead where the things head seemed to be (lacking facial features, he could barely tell the head from a lump of diseased flesh,) and shot twice. The monster fell to the ground, pulsating and reeking of decay. Archer walked casually over to the slumped form and stomped down on its head, resulting in a satifying squelch and a gush of decayed meat and ooze. Archer grinned in spite of himself and continued up the street, not looking back once. There was really no point, because he had every aspect of those faceless things memorized. They didn't hold any surprises anymore.

The door to his aparment was shut tight, which was always a good sign. Whenever he arrived to a door that was ajar, he knew a Descent was approaching, those times when the town erupted in pus spewing, blood gutted insanity. His apartment took on a consciousness and grew flesh, and he was... visited. He tried not to think about those times too much, but he couldn't help it as he unlocked his door and walked inside. The apartment was by no means luxurious. A small one bedroom cluttered with old books, papers and trash, and furnished with an old couch and a broken down bed that was serving as little more than a makeshift desk. Archer didn't sleep much, and when he did, it was usually an exhaustion induced pass-out on the ratty sofa while pouring over the volumes and charts he carted home from the library.

Archer closed the door behind him, locking 3 deadbolts before replacing the chain locks and dropping his revolver on the small table next to the door. Walking into his small kitchen area, Archer grabbed a bottle of warm water and a can of peaches he lifted from the local grocery store on one of his supply runs. Food wasn't easy to come by in Silent Hill, and if you found water you counted yourself as unnaturally lucky. He looked around his cabinets as he ate, taking a quick inventory of his supplies and shaking his head.

"Down to the last 10 bottles... and no more fruit. There's still some soup in the back, and those twelve packs of Jolt and Pepsi, but... I'll need to make another run tomorrow."

He sighed deeply as he walked over to the couch, throwing his empty can in a dark corner of the main room as he went. The prospect of another supply run did nothing for his mood, which had worsened steadily since he left the library. None of his research had led anywhere except in circles, and it was disheartening. And now, on top of his not being able to make any headway into the problems within Silent Hill, he'd have to brave an all-day trek around town to find another store that he had not yet exhausted of resources. He leaned his head back and covered his eyes with his hands, feeling that sensation of sleep creep over him. Although he wasn't sure it was the best thing to do, he was greatful when the darkness overtook him, and he descended into a restless sleep filled with poundings, moans, shrieks and fleeting images of entities that even the most fevered mind could not imagine.


	2. Chapter 2

-:TWO:-

The fitful sleep Archer enjoyed did nothing for his sour mood and, upon waking the next morning, he felt even worse. Getting up from the couch, he stretched and walked into the kitchen. Hoping against hope that he was mistaken in the assesment of his provisions from the previous night, he tentatively opened every cabinet and looked around again, frowning. No, of course he was running low on the essentials... and of course every store within 2 miles had already been picked clean... Sighing, he pulled on his overcoat and grabbed his revolver and some amunition from the small table, pocketing them as he began the tedious unlocking process on the front door. He had just gotten the third deadbolt unlocked and was reaching for the chain when he heard it. It was a sound that, in his seven months and 13 days in Silent Hill, he had never heard before. Off in the distance, somewhere he could not pinpoint exactly from within his apartment, a siren was sounding its sorrowful drone.

He emerged from the apartment building into the cool, fog filled morning in a slightly better mood. This new sound could mean a new development in his investigation, one that could lead him to his ultimate goal of discovering just what was wrong in the town of Silent Hill. He stood on the sidewalk for a moment, taking in any and all ambient sounds he could. That mysterious siren seemed to be eminating from a point somewhere near the lake, but he couldn't be sure. There was also an amalgumation of moans and murmers that rose and fell periodically. "Damn, they're active all of a sudden..." He thought to himself, looking up and down the street at the moving shadows in the fog. " I wonder if that siren has anything to do with this..." It was then that the siren finally stopped, and with it the moanings and whispers subsided. The shadows moved further away from him, into the mist, seemingly disappearing.

Crestfallen, Archer stood still a moment longer, hoping the siren would return so he could follow it to its source. When, after what seemed like an hour, nothing happened, he decided that he would just have to be ready for it if it ever returned and turned his focus back on supplies. It would be a long trek on foot, and none of the cars in town ran at all, so he headed toward the back lot of the building, towards the garages.

He was certain that he had seen a bicycle during one of his trips back there, and figured that pedalling would be easier than walking. The garages were small, maybe only enough room for a small car and a few personal effects, so he never put much thought into using one. He was glad, however, that he had decided to look when he did. If it wasn't for the fleeting glance at one of the garages sides, he would never had known that there was a bike back there. Old and rusty as it was, it seemed sturdy enough to use for a little while at least, and that was all he needed. He had just gotten the kickstand up and was beginning to pedal out of the lot when the siren sounded again.

It surprised him so much that he almost went over the handle bars onto the concrete. Catching himself, he sat there on the bike, not moving, while the siren wailed and the murmers started anew. This time, however, there was something different in the whispers. There were words. Archer sat and listened, trying to decipher the low mumblings that seemed all too familiar to him, when he noticed the darkness. It was creeping in from the edges of the dull white sky and converging at a point just north of him, from which it was slowly spreading and filling the horizon.

As he watched, early morning turned to latest night, but without the comforting constant of star shine. But it wasn't the sudden darkness that bothered him. Indeed, he had seen this once before, only from inside his apartment during a Descent. It was the fact that, unlike during a Descent, there was no sound. A complete and suffocating silence had engulfed the town, and Archer knew that it could only mean trouble. He got off the bike, letting it fall to the ground beside him. When it hit the pavement, it reverberated from the impact between it and the concrete, but did so silently.

He stood, fixed to that spot, more afraid to move than he had ever been in his entire life, waiting and hoping that some sound would permeate the insufferable quiet and let him know that he was not deaf. Suddenly, out of the shadows in front of him, a sound did emenate from an unseen source. The sound of laughter, shrill and incomprehensibly cold. This was when his brain stopped its sickening wheeling and, with a newfound determination, he called out into the black: "Who are you?" While he was expecting no words to come from his throat, but to his surprise they rang loud and clear, echoing back to him as if he was in a large cave. The laughter stopped, the black dissapeared and he found himself not in the parking lot, but back in his apartment, sitting on his couch and covered in a cold sweat.


	3. Chapter 3

-------------------------------------------:THREE:-------------------------------------------

Going back through all of the documents he had amassed since he arrived, Archer could find nothing about the significance of dreams.

"You'd think," He mused to himself, "That in all these writings there'd be one mention of a dream... nothing!"

He could still remember it vividly, the encroaching dark, the feeling of paralysis, and most of all the laughter. It was the laughter that stuck with him the clearest, that cold inhuman cackle, and it was this that spurred him on. It had been a day since the dream, and a night of no sleep. The supply run had been all but forgotten, and that didn't matter. He wasn't hungry anyway.

Dejected, he sat down hard on the couch, staring listlessly at the stack of paper and books he'd been pouring over for hours on end. Deep down, he knew that there would probably be nothing of interest in the dusty books and charts, that well was running dry rapildy. But still, as he sat there with his arms crossed and frowning, he couldn't help but think that there was something he missed. That could have been too much hope though, too much wishful thinking. He knew what he really had to do. Something he told himself he would never do again.

Go back to that town hall.

Back to the Department of Records office.

Back to the dark.

--------------------------------------:-----------------------------------------

The snow was falling thickly when he reached the dull concrete facade of the Silent Hill Town Hall. He grimaced and shook some snow from the hair that fell into his eyes, keeping his hand on the butt of his service revolver. He chanced a quick glance up and down the street, to see if anything was approaching. When he was sure that the coast was clear, he turned back toward the building and, opening the door with his free hand, cautiously ventured in. The door shut behind him, plunging him into a darkness filled with dust and silence.

Flicking on his flashlight, he moved the beam accross the dillapidated interior. The main room was dominated with a giant marble staircase that led to the upper level where the mayors office was located. Archer had no interest in that, and instead turned to his left and approached a plain white door that was peeling slightly. The fading letters on the grimy window read RCORD. Adjusting his flashlight so he was holding it between his cheek and shoulder, he drew his revolver as he pushed open the door.

The thing lunged at him, from within the darkened room, with lightning fast speed.

"SHIT!" He screamed as he was pushed to the cracked tile floor, his vision obscured by a mass of teeth and rancid saliva. His shock instantly subsided, though, and he kicked the skinless dog-like creature off of his chest. It hit the wall with a sickening thud and slid down, twitching uncontrollably. He ran over to the monster and stomped its head in, kicking it in the chest twice afterward out of frustration.

"These goddamn things were always drawn to this place," He said in his mind as he cautiously approached the door, still swaying gently from the outburst. "Last time I was here, one of those bastards almost took my head off."

He was breathing a little easier after he saw that there were no other dogs in the room, and he made his way through the debris to the wall lined with filing cabinets. Letting the light play accross the metal labels, he finally stopped on his prize. The filing cabinet was yellow, which made it stand apart from the other brown ones that flanked it. It had a padlock on it once, but he had taken care of that the last time he was here. He looked down at the floor and made note that the lock, broken into small pieces, was still laying at the base of the cabinet. That made him smile a bit, and he chuckled as he opened the drawer marked "C."

He pulled out the thick manilla folder, overflowing with documents and pictures.

The members of the Cult of the Old Gods... and their addresses.

That made him smile too.


	4. Chapter 4

-:FOUR:-

Archer stood outside of the plain grey house, peering through the fog and into the large picture window that looked into the living room. It was sparsely furnished, with only a small coffee table and a worn recliner. He thought how odd it was that this woman, Henrietta Bright, didn't own a television or displayed any pictures or paintings. Besides the dingy furniture, the walls were bare, and that struck him as odd. He could see that she was an odd woman, and that was a good indication that her house held some form of evidence that he couldn't obtain from the library. He walked up the small stoop and reached for the knob, stopping at the sound of a gutteral growl from out of the fog a short distance up the road. Rather than staying outside and fighting whatever was out there at the moment, he turned the knob and, finding it unlocked, he walked inside.

Closing the door behind him, he took the folded up piece of paper out of his pocket and looked it over again. This woman, Bright, was arrested for harboring some of the violent members of the Cult when they were being searched for. Glancing around the foyer, he decided that if he hadn't had this description, he would have just assumed this house belonged to a miserly old woman. Flimsy lace doilies adorned the endtables, on which rested dusty vases containing dead, dried flowers. A cracked mirror hung by the front door, but he didn't look into it. He had developed a habit of not looking into mirrors, for fear that it would trigger a descent or some other, more sinister event that he didn't want to think about. He folded up the info sheet, replaced it in his pocket, and walked through the foyer and into the living room.

He found himself in the living room that he had seen from outside. The walls were not a dull grey as he had perceived them from the porch, but rather a rusty dark-red that was peeling in the corners and up towards the top, where the walls met the ceiling. On the coffee table was an extremely old housekeeping magazine covered in a fine layer of dust, an old leather-bound bible that seemed to have had something spilled on it, and a small square paperweight that seemed completely out of place. It seemed to be gold or gold-plated, and cleaned to a shine. It seemed oddly familiar to him, like he had seen something like it before, and he pocketed it before moving on to the small kitchen.

"I don't think Miss Bright will mind." He thought to himself as he opened several cabinets.

The kitchen yielded no clues as to where she was or what exactly it was that she did, so he moved down a hall just off the living room which contained two doors. One led to a cramped bathroom which did not work in any respect, and he assumed that the other led to a bedroom of some kind. As he approached the door, he thought he heard the faint rustling of movement from the room within. He tensed up instantly and withdrew his gun from its belt holster. As he went to open the door, he heard the rustling again, a little faster this time. Holding the gun eye level, he opened the door and wallked in.

It was like a scene out of a dream the sickest psychopath in the world could not have come up with. He was standing in the middle of a circular room, the floor made of iron grating that looked down into the blackness of a pit below. The wall was painted with blood, dark brown and seemingly long dry, save for several rivulets.

Coming from the bodies.

12 of them, tied up and wrapped completely in obscenely filthy rags. They were suspended by means of strange metal squares that seemed to be chained to the wall, which pierced them with long rusty metal shivs. The rags were soaked through with blood, mostly dried, but several of the bodies were still oozing congealed, dark blood. Archer was dumbstruck. He had read of the atrocities commited by the Cult, but even he didn't believe that a human being would be capable of doing this. He was about to turn and get the hell out of there when the rustling returned, louder and more frantic than before. He turned toward the source to see that one body, on the opposite side of the circle, was wriggling feircely, trying to free itself. Not thinking, he ran over to the form and reached out to rip the cloth from where the persons face should've been.

"Don't be afraid, I'm here to hel..." Was all he got out before he realized the grave mistake he had made.

The body doubled over at the waist and let loose a shrill scream that pierced Archers very soul. Clutching his ears, he stepped back into the center of the room, only to observe that the other bodies, even the ones that had so much blood around them that they could not possibly be alive, were following suit. One by one, as if a chain reaction had been triggered, the wrapped forms writhed and screamed. Still clutching his ears, he fell to his knees hard on the grated floor, shutting his eyes and holding his ears as tightly as he could manage. He did not know exactly when he lost consciousness, but he came to some time later, lying on his side in the room. He slowly got up and looked around. The wrapped bodies were gone, replaced instead with a strange layer of fleshy material, that seemed to breathe and writhe. The door, he noted, was gone. Instead, there was a large hole in the middle of the room, into which a constant stream of blood flowed from a spot where the walls met the ceiling. It took him a second to realise what had happened, but when it dawned on him, it carried with it a terror so deep that he almost lost his breath.

He had been inside this place during a Descent.

He was in Otherside.

And the only way out was down.


	5. Chapter 5

-:FIVE:-

He sat, for what seemed like hours but could have only been minutes, on the edge of that yawning abyss. Staring down into the inky black, Archer listened intently for any sound at all that might've wafted up from wherever the hole led, but heard only the quiet whisper of the blood steadily flowing over the ground next to him. Trying to weigh his options, he soon realized that there was only one possible thing he could do.

He had to jump.

The prospect of jumping down some hole with no clear depth or destination, in a house he had never been to during a Descent, was not at all appealing. Then again, neither was staying in the gently pulsating, bleeding room either. He knew that if he ever wanted to get out, he had to jump down. Resolving himself to this fact, he slowly and unsteadily got to his feet and walked once more around the perimeter of the hole, just trying to work up a small amount of confidence and to stave off fear. Making sure that all of his stuff was secure enough so as not to fall out of his pockets during the fall, he took a long, deep breath and stepped off into the waiting darkness of the pit.

He was standing in the middle of a street, thick fog pressing in all around him, in front of a run-down school building. Confused, he looked around quickly, trying to get his bearings and to make sense of what just happened. The last thing he remembered was stepping into the hole, and now here he was, in the open in Old Silent Hill. He looked down to check the ground and found it to be solid, if not slightly cracked and dirty, concrete. He had expected to see the dirty, rust colored grating of Otherside staring coldly back at him, and this sight gave him some slight encouragement. "The town's not in Descent anymore," He thought with a sigh. "At least there's that."

He sat down on the curb, ran his fingers through his hair, and took a welcome breath of brisk evening air.

It took him a few moments to realize that neither his sigh nor his breath had made a sound.

His heart sped up slightly and a cold sweat broke out as he stood up and took another look around. Everything looked normal. The shop windows were all dark and lifeless, a few useless cars lined either side of the street, and the fog was lazily drifting all around him. But there was no sound at all. Not a cricket, the sigh of the wind, or the rustle of a piece of paper on the breeze.

"This is what happened in that dream," He thought frantically, remembering the terror that struck. "Could I be dreaming?"

This question was answered when a figure appeared, hazy in the fog and off at a considerable distance. But it was approaching, and approaching fast.

Almost too fast.

"There's no way anything in this town could move that fast." He decided resolutely, but even as he thought that, the figure approached ever closer. Now only several yards away, he realized that it wasn't a figure at all.

It was a bicycle.

He had to jump out of the way as the bike screamed past. Or, rather, it would have screamed past if it was able. Instead it merely rushed by silently, creating a breeze that rustled his hair as he watched it dissapear into the opposite distance. Momentarily, he wanted to run after it, to see where it was going. This urge subsided when he noticed that he was casting a shadow against a far building, bathed in a yellowish glow. He turned around to see the door of the school opening and a person emerging. He was about to run up and say hello when he stopped dead in his tracks, recognition washing over him.

He was looking at himself.

And he woke up in front of his apartment, sprawled out on the sidewalk.


	6. Chapter 6

-:SIX:-

The ground felt too cold, too rusty to be concrete, and it was permeated by small evenly spaced holes.

Grating.

Archer sat upright and looked around, his head reeling. The buildings, seemingly normal when he left that morning, were now in advanced states of disrepair. Some were missing large sections of architecture, and there was a sour smell of blood and something else... something dead. It seemed to ooze along in the air, stinging his nostrils and sticking to his clothes. Having been there for so long, he was able to ignore the smell, but he remembered how hard that was when he was first stranded. Standing upright, he stretched his stiff back and looked in the direction of his apartment. It seemed to be the only building that was completely untouched, but he knew better.

He knew what his Room looked like right now.

As much as he didn't like being outside during a Descent, he wasn't afraid of it. Being inside, though, that terrified him. He looked up and down the street, so familiar just hours ago, now an unrecognizable collection of rubble and grating. He took a tentative step forward, felt something hit his leg, and jumped back in shock, ready to fight or run. When he saw there was nothing there, he realized that it was something in his pocket. He reached into it and pulled out the cube. It was still as it was when he first picked it up at the old womans house, shiny and mysterious. He replaced it, still wondering about its purpose, when movement caught his eye. Something was crawling along the ground toward him, rattling the metal as it went.

"A giant roach..." He thought with some relief. "Just a giant roach."

It wasn't fast, and they weren't strong, so he didn't pay much attention. Those things usually didn't even notice him, just crawled past on their merry ways. This one was no different, shuffling by and emitting soft clicking sounds as it went. He hated to admit it, but he kind of liked those things. The had a kind of dignity, something the other things lacked. It was as if they could care less what was happening around them, because they had a purpose.

They had a task.

It was then that Archer decided to follow it.

He didn't know why, but it just felt right, and he ran after the creature until he caught up with it, where he slowed and matched its pace. They had gone along the grating, past ruins and broken lamp posts, when he noticed that this was the only creature he had seen in Otherside thus far. Usually this place was teeming with those dog things, and there were usually flying things too, but not today. Today it seemed to be just him and the roach.

Something about that made him uneasy.

He had been paying so much attention to the roach, he had lost track of the path they were taking. He looked up and stopped dead in his tracks, letting the roach continue on a few paces. Then it stopped too, its feelers moving frantically.

Then it dropped through the grating.

It was like there was nothing under it at all. Something he would have noticed had he not been too busy looking around. He was by a wall of a large room, larger than 3 of his apartments, and the ceiling was impossibly high. It was so far above him that it seemed to dissolve into a thick grey mist, thicker than any fog he had ever seen outside. The room seemed to be made of the same grating that replaced the sidewalks, and it was lit from the bottom by a dull red glow.

And then the sound started.

A grinding, thumping whir, like a buzzsaw on bricks, was coming from all around him. The room began to shake, and he was thrown to the floor, off ballance. He got up quickly, standing as steadily as he could, and looked around for a source of the noise or movement. Just as quickly as it began, however, it was over. The sound faded away, the room calmed down, and the fog lifted. The red glow grew stronger, and it was as if the entire room was lit by a darkroom lamp. He ran to the center of the room, looked up, and stared, wide eyed.

On the ceiling were bodies. Thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands, all wrapped in a yellowing cloth, stained with blood and bile. None were moving, save for their gentle sway from the recent movement. On the ceiling, painted above them, was a giant symbol. It appeared to be a circle, inscribed with triangles and surrounded with writing he couldn't understand. He realized that the symbol, not some unseen source from below, was illuminating the space he was in, as it was glowing red and appeared almost liquid. It was while looking at this that he noticed another thing. A large chain, like something that they'd use to keep an oceanliner docked, was suspending the room from the middle of the symbol.

He was in a cage.

And then the bottom dropped out, and he was falling, shocked.


End file.
